News from Alprilla Farm: The fresh ginger root will be back, and there’s a new, ten and a half foot wide red toy in the barn - a combine. That wheat that I helped harvest last summer for about an hour and a half, beneath cloudless August skies, before I couldn’t take it anymore? - Alprilla Farm has invested in local grains, purchasing a sweet old combine from Michigan to do the harvesting and threshing this year.
I stopped by the farm at lunch time the other day (fresh eggs and scallions that had wintered over in the fields, homemade pickles, toast and homemade raspberry jam, with Tobin’s frothy home-brewed beer) for a visit with Tucker and Tobin. Noah was away at his girlfriend’s farm in Pennsylvania.
Tucker told me that he and Tobin had played the seasonal lottery that day, and had just planted spinach and barley, saying they weren’t sure if it was too early or not, but they were spinning the wheel. The ground was surprisingly dry and easy to plow, so they just kept going, turning over 3 acres of land, and it’s still March in New England.
Alprilla Farm CSA Shares are still available. Along with the various and verdant harvest of vegetables like last year’s, watch for a growing grain industry over there on John Wise Avenue. Hull-less oats, barley, and red wheat are getting sowed, but this time the red combine will be doing most of the labor. By summer we could be eating bread baked with local wheat. When did that happened last?
